Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the parallel text edition of the 1922 "Oxford" and 1926 "Subscribers" texts, the signed, limited, and numbered edition, copy #30 of 37, in the publisher's quarter goatskin binding and slipcase, hand-numbered and signed by the Editor, Lawrence's official biographer T. E. Lawrence, edited by Jeremy Wilson Other Fine Bindings,Other Non-Fiction

This is one of a precious few limited and numbered sets of the Parallel Text edition of the 1922 "Oxford' and 1926 "Subscribers" versions of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. This remarkable set is unequivocally the most textually comprehensive published edition of T. E. Lawrence s masterpiece, featuring 1,000 dual-column pages in two large volumes. It was painstakingly prepared and published by Jeremy Wilson (1944-2017), head of Castle Hill Press and Lawrence s official biographer. This is hand-numbered set "30" of only 37 numbered sets issued. This set is bound in the publisher s quarter brown Morocco goatskin over brown buckram sides, the contents bound with brown endpapers, brown top edge stain, and silk head and tail bands. The two volumes are housed together in the publisher s stout, unadorned brown buckram slipcase. The limitation page is hand-numbered by Jeremy Wilson in his customary and apropos red ink. Condition of both volumes and slipcase is pristine, as-new.Seven Pillars is the story of Thomas Edward Lawrence's (1888-1935) remarkable odyssey as instigator, organizer, hero, and tragic figure of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, which he began as an eccentric junior intelligence officer and ended as "Lawrence of Arabia." This time defined Lawrence with indelible experience and celebrity, which he spent the rest of his short life struggling to reconcile and reject, to recount and repress. Lawrence famously resisted broad publication of Seven Pillars during his lifetime. When Lawrence died in 1935 following a motorcycle crash, his magnum opus was rushed into print in the only version readily available - the 1926 "Subscribers" abridgement. Few realize that the text released to the world as "Complete and Unabridged" in 1935 and which has become so celebrated is, in fact, a significantly abridged version. Even more remarkable, the full 1922 "Oxford Text" - a third longer was not published until 1997. Jeremy Wilson took this text from the manuscript in the Bodleian Library and T. E. Lawrence's annotated copy of the 1922 Oxford Times printing. When preparing the limited editions of the Oxford Text, Wilson s Castle Hill Press also undertook the painstaking, mammoth task of creating this parallel text two large volumes containing complete texts of the 1922 and 1926 versions, typeset side-by-side in double columns, aligning the beginning of each sentence that exists in both texts so that readers can see at a glance exactly what was omitted and what was revised, illuminating the significant differences in style and content between the two texts. Beyond the subjective questions of literature, in terms of both autobiography and history, "the 1922 text is, without question, superior to that of 1926. In the process of literary abridgement, Lawrence cut out numerous personal reflections, some of which were important." For example, the 1926 text excised Lawrence s "confession that the flogging at Deraa left him with a masochistic longing and his recollection of this event a few weeks later when he was present at Allenby s official entry into Jerusalem. The historical record, likewise often fell victim to abridgement because of the cuts, [the narrative] does not always account for Lawrence s time or seem to square with independent records. Worse still, the frustrations and abandoned plans of 1917-18 were largely suppressed in the 1926 text " This parallel text is the only available means for readily distinguishing the significant differences between the two texts of one of the most significant works of twentieth century literature. Of the precious few 37 numbered sets of parallel text produced, 20 were issued only as a component of elaborately-bound special sets of the 1997 edition of the 1922 Oxford text. The balance were reserved for copyright deposit libraries, the editor, and the press or, as with this set, issued to subscribers in 2008. First, limited, numbered, and signed edit